Thanks! I've come down with a nasty case of gaming lately, but managed to tear myself away and get some work done, one more section of the top of the fuselage. Caused a bit of difficulty as this area is seldom photographed up close and also subtly asymmetrical. And after looking at my references more closely I've realized I need to redo the base of the tail as the shape is slightly off.

Thanks chaps! Here's the wire you asked for (at one meshsmooth iteration.)
There's plenty of ngons, but as long as they don't make everything too wonky I don't mind.
(as with all my pics here, click it, and then again to expand)

Very detailed and elaborate model indeed. Those wireframe looks perfect to create nice shade and subtle reflection. Any plan to animate this? Or is it going to be just a modeling show piece?
Hope I can see the full shaded version soon.

Original plan was to do static shots only, but the prospect of animation is tempting. I'll just have to leave my computer rendering for a couple of weeks. Good learning experience though, so I might just go for it!

Finished detailing up the top of the fin today. The pointy cylinder contains a light for illuminating the refueling port area for night time aerial refueling. In case anyone's wondering what that thing is

Andre: Thanks! Only photos I've got are what I've found on the net, which is of very varying quality unfortunately. Might be able to steal details but that's it, so mostly hand painting. Since my machine is a bit limited in the memory department atm I'm considering doing a combination of bitmaps and procedurals/worldprojected detailmaps using the good old pitsnpeaks script to drive edge wear and such. That should also help hide the way Max borks up uv seams when meshsmoothing. I plan to do all the markings and such with paths to support upscaling at a later time if I want to switch approach. Haven't decided yet which way to do it though.

Spent a lot of time lately completely redoing the base geometry on the rearmost portion of the fuselage around the speed brakes to make sure it looks right before I start detailing. Finished up the stabilators as well and put the engine in place. Engine is still missing a few hinges where the "turkey feathers" attach to the inner plates though. The nozzle is one mesh for now because I don't want a gazillion more objects in the scene, but I have a section where all parts are separate and animated to open and close.

Very nice modeling progress so far. I like how it looks very clean and sharp
I know about the problem of getting useable textures form the net for certain things all too well.
Go here and open all those links i new tabs, maybe you're lucky F-16 Walkarounds
To avoid the memory issues for your textures, look up how to do tiled EXRs.

Andre: Thanks for the tip, I've been using prime portal for years though, vacuumed it of F-16 refs already. I'll look up the EXR thing though!

Slow progress lately, made a few assumptions about the shape of the air brakes which lead me to have to redo a bunch of the base geometry, but they're coming along nicely now. It's slightly complicated by the area in front of the brakes being hollow, have to do proper panel seams and plate thicknesses. The interior supporting structure of the brakes themselves and the mechanisms inside will probably be my next focus.

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